


Una Notte a Napoli or: the Restless Life of a European Eccentric

by pimpam



Series: The Continuing Adventures of Merseyside's Finest [3]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, also reading it back I think everyone has mother issues in this, in a weird way, just it's a thing for some reason, mild violence i guess, not like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 07:32:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10826667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pimpam/pseuds/pimpam
Summary: Marek Hamšík is a contract killer who has been known to arrange pretty nice bouquet of flowers on occasion.  Lorenzo Insigne is the party boy son of Napoli's mayor who isn't as simple as he seems and happens to have pissed off the real estate developer at the wrong time.





	Una Notte a Napoli or: the Restless Life of a European Eccentric

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justkisa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justkisa/gifts).



> This fic fits into @gutilicious's series "The Continuing Adventures of Merseyside's Finest", but it's more of a side story. Reading the rest of it isn't necessary at all. (But it's good. You totally should!) It's more that I liked the world and wanted to build out on it.

Every Italian Marek had ever met wore the same uniform for an evening out on the town. It consisted of a clean white button up shirt with trendy jeans that usually left nothing in either front or in back to the imagination. Marek wasn’t complaining, mind, but it was… Funny, to him that such a uniform existed at all, let alone that there was such broad consistency to it. He wondered vaguely when and why it had come about. At any rate, Lorenzo -- _Lollo <3_ \-- was no different in spite of his social media savvy.

He’d wandered into Moses Live Bar, which was located on one of the smallest streets Marek had ever seen, and he’d spent the last several weeks bullshitting in Barcelona. The club itself was nothing extraordinary, just a large basement room underneath the historical city center where a mediocre DJ razzed the crowed. If Marek were honest, he’d recommend them to Pasha in Barcelona, or Scala in London. If he were reflective, he’d think about how all the stylish night clubs had two syllable names. He wasn’t, generally, that reflective. Reflective turned quickly to dwelling.

Anyway, Lorenzo’s -- _Lollo <3’s_\-- white button down shirt was practically painted on in the heat of the club. Marek watched him through the throng of people. He was handsome, shorter than Marek had really expected, but with a good bone structure and an animation to him that more than made up for it.

He moved comfortably through the hordes of sharply dressed people, with Marek following a few steps behind for much of the night. Eventually, Lorenzo got a drink and settled into a crowd with a few friends. Marek thought he recognized one guy from Lorenzo’s instagram photos, but he couldn’t be sure. For his part, he settled into another corner, near enough their table to watch, but far enough away not to attract attention, and waited.

An hour passed, in it, they’d gone through three rounds of cocktails. Marek had maintained the same vodka tonic. Marek checked his watch, looked boredly around the club. If Insigne wanted to be a party boy and get himself drunk, so much the better. That would be half the job done there, and no one would think much of another little party boy socialite getting mugged in a bad section of an old European city.

Marek had been checking his phone for the evening’s football scores when they started moving. One of Lorenzo’s friends was putting on his jacket, and after a moment, there was a chorus of _ciao bello_ ’s along with some other rapid Italian he couldn’t follow. It sounded like typical bullshit between friends. Marek downed his drink quickly, intending to follow them.

But then the tallest of the bunch left with a girl in a too-short dress at his arm. Lorenzo stayed behind, resettling himself at the far side of their table. He took a sip of whatever brightly colored concoction was in front of him. Then he looked up and caught Marek’s gaze as if he’d known he was being watched. Which was entirely possible. People had kind of a sixth sense for when they were being watched. Even idiots and drunk kids.

He smiled and raised his now mostly empty glass in what he hoped was a nonthreatening way. Their group had been making by far the most noise in the club, it wasn’t out of line for someone to have noticed and happened to look over. Still, Marek’s strong suit wasn’t nonthreatening, generally. Lorenzo smiled back. Well, _smirked_ was probably more accurate. The punk smirked back at him.

Then he walked to the bar, chatted a minute with its tender (also obviously Italian, after all he had the uniform), and then was suddenly at Marek’s table with two glasses of something that looked vaguely pinkish in the light.

" _Non ci siamo già visti da qualche parte_?" he had to shout to be heard over the music, but Marek shook his head responding that no, there was no possible way Lorenzo knew him from anywhere. The kid frowned at the response, his thin lips pursing delicately. At first Marek thought perhaps he’d messed up his Italian. It was acceptable enough for getting around, made him seem like a tourist which was fine in a city full of tourists, but it wasn’t as fluent as his Russian, or German, or even Spanish. 

Instead, Lorenzo looked up at him, dark eyes and strong brows quizzical. It wasn’t a bad look, really. The pickup probably worked for him regularly. "Czech?" he asked, either genuinely curious, or good at faking it.

"Good ear," Marek said, accepting the drink with a nod. Normally, he’d be more suspicious for free liquor, or free anything, really. But there was no need. Lorenzo was obviously already too drunk to try much more than simple charm.

"I’m from Bratislava," he continued. "Near Austria."

Lorenzo swallowed a generous sip of pink alcohol. Marek sipped his own more cautiously. He thought he tasted gin in there somewhere, buried underneath bitters and something with far too much sugar for that time of night.

"A tourist. You’re here for fun, or work?" Lorenzo’s eyes were glassy and from his odd phrasing, Marek figured the plethora of cocktails had probably done their work. He smiled across the table at the Italian, easy and full of teeth.

"Work, but this is Napoli. It’s hard to not have fun."

Lorenzo looked at him, and Marek thought for a moment that perhaps he might have laid it on too thick. Then he broke out into a happy, almost innocent grin.

"Yes," he said, downing the rest of his pink mess. Marek’s stomach curled at the thought, and he’d seen his share of stomach curling sights. Lorenzo moved to get up, wobbling slightly on his feet as he did.

"Why don’t you let me?" Marek suggested casually, nodding towards the bar. Lorenzo nodded eagerly. 

"Thank you," he demurred slightly, in a way that Marek would have to have been incredibly naïve to not see as practiced. "You know, my mother always said that life is short," he eyed Marek appraisingly. 

He felt underdressed again. "Oh? Smart woman--"

“Yes, she said life is short and so you should fuck a Slovakian with a mohawk,” Lorenzo drew himself up to his full wobbly height. It wasn’t objectively impressive, but it did convey a certain loftiness. A _regality_ , if you will (and maybe the pink concoction was working cause Marek certainly would). Still, that was pretty bold. He smirked. Bold was fun, sometimes. More so on people he wasn’t being paid to get rid of, but. Something’s can’t be helped.

“Was that her exact phrasing?” He asked, scooting around Lorenzo, closer than was really necessary.

The Italian blushed. “ _Well_ ,” expression exaggerated for the alcohol and tawdry club lighting. “Maybe not exactly.”

"I figured,” Marek replied, resting a hand on the Lorenzo’s shoulder easily. “Do you like vodka? I like vodka.” he said and darted off towards the bar.

He remembered some shitty Eurovision song’s remix playing through the too-loud sound system, and Lorenzo sitting at the small table bathed in a pale blue light as he fiddled boredly with his phone.

And then he was gone. Marek’s fucking mark vanished into the night as he clutched two vodka tonics and tried not to look like a moron who’d just been ditched by his university girlfriend at 2am.

\- _(Two weeks earlier…)_

“Get to Naples,” 

Cavani was a South American he’d contracted for a few times. He was tall and thin and even his voice managed to sound skeletal and angled. Marek scrunched his face, as if that would somehow give the rather abrupt order more context. They met in a bar in Barcelona where Marek had been blissfully squandering the payment from his last two jobs. 

The good thing about the legitimate European economy going to hell was that the black market only seemed to better and better as the recession went in. Marek had known that people didn’t usually resort to illegality out of any true desire to screw the man, or because certain people were just aspiring supervillains from birth. No, it was usually a cruel combination of desperation and laziness. When the threshold of legal activities became too high, people looked elsewhere for their basic needs. 

He swilled the whisky in his glass. It was mediocre but stylish, and imported from Japan which made it exotic. He was only 75% sure he’d seen the same brand in a vending machine on a subway platform in Fukuoka. 

“What’s in Naples?” Marek asked mildly; feigning disinterest was part of the game.

“A job worth thirty thousand euros and all the pizza you can eat,” Cavani leered at him across the table. “You don’t tan well. How long do you intend to hang around a beach in Spain?”

Marek bowed his head. “It’s got like nine UNESCO World Heritage sites.”

“Like you care,” Cavani countered.

“Fine, I don’t. But the locals are nice to look at and the liquor’s cheap.” 

Around them, the bar buzzed with activity. People ordering drinks and small tapas, meeting friends after work or university, or just because. It was nice, it was comfortable, and Marek had enough money stashed away here and there to make it last two, maybe three more months, if he started cooking at home on the weeknights.

Cavani rolled his eyes in response. “And I have a job for you in Naples worth thirty thousand euros.”

At a table near the front of the bar, a young couple leaned into each other's, soft and heavy and full of affection. Marek watched them for a moment before turning back to Cavani.

“I want seventy-five,” he sipped the scotch and watches Cavani’s angled face contort.

“Forty.”

“Seventy-five.”

“Forty-five and a first class ticket,” the Uruguayan pursed his lips as if he was annoyed, but Marek could see it was mostly an act. It wasn’t Cavani’s money, so he didn’t care. He was just trying to make good for whoever he was working for this week.

Still, Marek knew what his services were worth. Or thought he did, anyway.

“It’s a five hour flight,” he scoffed. 

Cavani sighed dramatically. “Fifty, then.”

“Seventy, because I like you.” Marek downed the last of his scotch. It was a not so subtle way of demonstrating his willingness to walk away.

“That does wonders for my nerves,” he made a show of sipping his otherwise untouched glass of Rioja with an air of consideration and thoughtfulness that seemed utterly ill-fit. Then, suddenly, Cavani reached into the pocket of his jacket, produced a phone and proceeded to type a few quick messages. “Fine,” he said calmly, “Seventy. I’ve informed my client.”

He eyed the couple again absently, fidgeted with his empty glass. Abruptly, Marek had no interesting in being anywhere around Cavani. A weird, restless feeling had overtaken him and he knew somehow that it wouldn’t leave him alone without a good walkabout or a fuck or both. “You know my preferred method of payment and conditions. You’ll get me the details”

“Of course,” Cavani said, now ignoring him in favor of the phone. His client was, evidently, eager.

“Then I’m gone,” Marek said simply, not bothering with any other farewell. 

“Sure,” it seemed like Cavani was about to let him go, but suddenly he looked back, calling after Marek as he reached the front of the bar. “You sell yourself short, you know. I told this guy you wouldn’t be had for less than seventy-five. I figured you’d start at one hundred.”

Marek threw up a hand. He didn’t feel like dignifying Cavani with any greater response.

-

Airports were all more or less the same and El Prat was no different. Clear signage in the three languages, clean white and grey light that prevented one from really being able to tell what time of day or night it was. Marek smiled at the attendant as she reviewed his passport and waved him onto the airlock. Within a minute or so, he’d loaded his one bag into an overhead bin and settled quietly into his seat.

When they were twenty minutes in or so, and the flight attendants were making their rounds he ordered a vodka tonic. He downed the drink in three sips and ten minutes later was out cold.

He would necessarily call it a nightmare but Marek Hamšík had a recurring dream of being trapped in an underground train station. Usually he was being chased, the long arm of the law having finally caught up, or by some mafioso or Russian oligarch he'd pissed off. Sometimes the feeling of pursuit was nonsensical and he'd round a corner onto a platform at Holborn or the Passeig de Gràcia or Times Square or Shinjuku, into the waiting arms of a roaring grizzly bear. He'd never seen a grizzly bear in real life, not even at a zoo, but somehow in his dreams it was vivid and he had only two options: await death by being torn apart and eaten alive, or jump onto the track in front of an incoming train. 

He usually picked the train, letting his subconscious white out to the roar of a signal horn and his own desperate waking gasps. 

Every so often Marek’s dreams got weirder. One time he'd been abducted by a cartoonishly bug headed alien instead of being hit by a train. But they all ended more or less the same way; two options, neither good, and as was pragmatic, he usually chose the quickest way out. Some people might be disturbed by a recurring dream that played on their own mortality but given his line of work, Marek figured it was to be expect. Instead, he chose to focus on the positive. He was pragmatic. During that particular dream a man's voice had called his name and he'd felt himself pulled back from his impending death.

He woke five hours later with a headache, to the sounds of the captain announcing that they’d be landing soon. Thinking little of it, he picked himself up from from his seat, taken a piss, and tried not to think too much about the odd sensation of moving through the air at several hundred (thousand?) miles an hour while urinating. Marek then washed his hands with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction. His own reflection looked back at him in the mirror tired and washed out in the strange and unforgiving airplane light. 

By the time he made it to the flat he’d rented, Cavani’s email was waiting for him with instructions. The target was the Lorenzo Insigne, 25 years old and the son of the mayor. That meant he’d probably have an entourage of more annoying little twenty-somethings, maybe a bodyguard or two. Marek wasn’t worried, per se, but it made things more complicated.

The other complication was that Cavani’s employer, now _his_ employer, didn’t just want the kid dead. He wanted Little Lorenzo humiliated for some reason. “But,” Cavani’s email had said, “It can’t look like a professional job.” What exactly all that entailed could be left up to Marek to figure out, but Marek knew Cavani and that in itself was probably a bad sign. 

He ran a cursory google search, followed the punk on the more anonymous social media platforms, drank the rest of his overpriced airplane vodka, and passed out again. This time he didn’t dream.

Napoli was gorgeous in the way that most ancient European cities were gorgeous. It had an eclectic character, Roman ruins, Gothic cathedrals, and quaint sidewalk cafés where chicly dressed young people drank coffees at midday and laughed over glasses of wine and cigarettes in the evening. Marek hadn’t seen any of it in the fourteen and a half hours since he’d landed, but he was also certain the city had a nightlife. From Lorenzo Insigne’s Instagram he was damn sure, in fact, that the Napoli had a nightlife.

Insigne, it turned out, was a social media addict. From Marek’s research, the kid had finished university a year before but decided not to take on any standard _career_ as such. Instead, he was attempted to be an _influencer_. On instinct, Marek found that obnoxious as hell. On the other hand, it made Insigne incredibly easy to stalk.

So, he spent his afternoon in Chiaia, drinking coffee in a fashionable café feeling slightly underdressed. At 6pm Marek adjourned to his hotel, only to receive an update from Insigne, Lollo <3's social media not an hour later.

`Dancing on a Wednesday?` it read. `How decadent.`

Marek ate dinner at a small café near his lodgings. By midnight he was dressed smartly in a suit, his hair was styled up, and his classes were cleaned-- the stylish pair with the dark plastic rims. 

-

“I’m telling you, Marek, Napoli is going to win the league this year.” Marko Rog was nineteen. His mother had moved to Napoli twenty years ago for a man who had left her nineteen years ago. Still, Italy, in Marek’s limited experience, attracted resolved women, for better or worse, and Signora Rog had opened a flower shop in a section of town which had the good luck of becoming fashionable. A flower shop Marek found himself working in to pass the time as he went about his hunting for whatever the fuck had become of Lorenzo Insigne. 

At first, Marek thought Cavani’s employer might have put out a double-hit on him. But no, he was definitely still alive, from his social media. He tweeted out vague, Kanye-esque nonsense at all hours of the night, but the few times Marek had gotten a location on him, he’d had guards around, or been in a pack of other obnoxiously good looking twenty somethings with stylish haircuts. So, he’d been forced to wait.

“Didn’t you lose your star striker?” he asked boredly, tending to a bucket of gerberas that somehow radiated sunlight up at him. 

“We did, and he’s an asshole,” Marko replied. Marek couldn’t see his face, but he’d have put money on it that the kid was smiling in spite of himself. “But we have a great lineup. There’s this Belgian we bought a few years ago who’s just magic.” 

He moved on to the tulips. They were more tolerable somehow, in spite of their bright colors. He liked football well enough, but between Marko’s youthfully sunny disposition and the flowers, there was only so much he could take.

“And the captain… He’s so skilled in midfield! Amazing! Since you’re here now, you have to support Napoli, alright?”

Marek nodded but he was pretty sure Marko didn’t see. Or really care, given that the kid kept talking.

“I mean, you can’t beat the San Paolo on a matchday. I promise.”

It wasn’t that Marek didn’t like football. He did, really. It was just that he never had time or energy to worry much about it. And also football stadiums made him nervous. Any large aggregation of people made him nervous, in a way. It was like a terrorist attack waiting to happen. 

He thought vaguely of something he’d read once about the Chilean national stadium, the one that had looked so new and full of light over the summer. Or the countless local sports venues used as prisoner camps throughout Yugoslavia’s transition to so-called democracy. No, Marek didn’t care for football stadiums, not in person. They seemed like a bad idea… That probably wasn’t how normal people thought, though.

He glanced up at Marko thoughtfully, humming some sort of assent, and then turned back to his tulips.

The shop door swung open then, chiming cheerfully, because everything in Napoli was cheerful. After a week and a half of nothing, in from the sunlight waltzed Lorenzo Insigne. He wore if not the same tight jeans he’d been wearing at the club, something very similar, and a designer label t-shirt under a light bomber jacket. In his working trousers and shop apron, Marek once again felt underdressed. Then again, Lorenzo had been drunk as hell the night he’d vanished. Maybe he wouldn’t recognize him.

Lorenzo marched directly to the front of the shop, setting a twenty euro bill down on the counter. “I need flowers,” Marko looked vaguely horrified.

“Sure, _signore_ ,” he sputtered when he’d finally gotten a hold of himself. Marek frowned but kept his head down. It wasn’t his business, and if he didn’t look like a complete psychopath, he might be able to persuade Marko to let him take an early lunch. Then maybe he could just kill Insigne and have this entire ill-conceived adventure over and done with.

“... We have some tulips that could work for you,” Marko offered politely. Marek frowns. It’s not like Lorenzo doesn’t have the money to spend more.

“If you’re that cheap,” It probably wasn’t his place to chime in. He was new to the shop, after all. But the idea of cheap flowers pissed him off on principle.

Again, Marko looked utterly horrified.

Oh well. “If you’re that pressed, get her chocolates. They’ll go farther.”

Lorenzo, though, Lorenzo looked at him first pensively, then appraisingly, and then knowingly.

“ _Non ci siamo già visti da qualche parte_?” he smirked. Marek frowned. Marko still looked horrified. If the kid wasn't careful, his face would get stuck like that. I was already owlish, somehow.

“Marek!?” he squawked.

“Marek is a nice name,” Lorenzo repeated, looking far too pleased with himself. He was a smug little bastard. 

Marek pulled himself up to his full height, tucking the tulips away in their place in the display. The colors were brilliant against the dark green plastic containers, all primary yellows and reds and violets, with beautiful spring green stems. They’d be wasted on the drunken punk from the club.

He was about to say as much when Lorenzo turned back to Marko.

“Listen, I just need flowers, okay. For my mom. Something white and mom-ish.”

“Um, is she dead?”

Lorenzo raised a dark eyebrow apprehensively. “... No?”

“White is for the dead. Send it to the hospital sometime, if you want a good laugh,” Marek supplied helpfully. He was starting to wonder if perhaps Marko’s face really was just stuck that way.

Dark eyes narrowed at him. “That’s fucked up,” Lorenzo replied, but he didn’t seem that offended by the joke. If anything, he seemed quite amused. 

“... Marek!” Marko screeched, almost as if his voice had finally caught up to his brain.

Lorenzo waved a hand dismissively. 

“Look, don’t worry about it. That’s good to know. Don’t want momma to think I’m angling for anything, right?” Marek threw his head to one side. 

“No, it’s not… alright,” Marko started. “Marek, why don’t you go get lunch for us. I’ll take a ham sandwich and orange juice.” It was the professional thing to do. Dismiss the problem before it could escalate. Marko would be a good shop keeper.

He probably could have fought it. But then again he’d also probably made more of everything than necessary. Besides, it wasn’t Marek’s intention to be recognized or develop a _rapport_ such as it were. He threw his hands up in defeat and headed a bit unsteadily for the door. Logically, there wasn’t much of a difference between the Neapolitan sun and the sun in Barcelona. It seemed brighter and more seering all the same.

When he returned to the shop less than half an hour later, Lorenzo was gone, but he’d ordered an arrangement to be delivered. “By you specifically,” Marko told him with a disapproving look.

It was a funny thing to be scolded by a teenager.

Marek had spent the afternoon arranging a two hundred euro monstrosity of exotic orchids and alstroemerias and really anything else he could think to shove in there just to be an asshole. It was beautiful. He maintained all afternoon to Marko that it would be utterly wasted on _this prick_.

“This prick happens to be the mayor’s son and it would probably be good to get his business,” Marko had chided.

“He’s a shitty dancer,” Marek had said, adding another green something or other out of spite before wrapping the entire thing in plastic.

Marko frowned at him from between one of the hanging plants displayed from the low shop ceiling. “That’s what you’re on about? What, did he steal a girl from you?”

“Something like that,” Marek shrugged noncommittally.

Marko frowned. There was something simple and easy about his quick friendly commiseration. “Fuck her anyway. And get over it.”

“... Sure.” Marek agreed, tucking the address into the pocket of his windbreaker and picked up the store’s beat up white moped.

-

The Insigne residence was a grand one family dwelling. Marek didn’t know whether it met the strict definition of a townhouse. In Barcelona, it would have just been a rather nice flat, in London, a fucking mansion. In Bratislava… Well, apartments this nice and this charmingly old fashioned didn’t exist much in Bratislava. At least not that he’d ever seen. Marek didn’t know the hierarchy of homes in Napoli, but it was nice. 

A maid answered the door in a uniform and everything, which was just a little old world. It offended both his egalitarian sensibilities and his tolerance for pretentious bullshit.

“For Signore Lorenzo Insigne,” Marek said, all but shoving the arrangement into her hands. Before he could hop back on the bike and speed off into the night, however, she stopped him. 

“Wait here”, she said, “Signore Lorenzo wanted to talk to you. To inspect the flowers”, she said. Marek sincerely doubted that. But sure enough within two minutes he was standing, idly inspecting the molding around the ceiling while Lorenzo smelled at the arrangement. 

“I don’t smell anything,” he stated blandly after a moment of sticking his nose into the mess of orchids, alstromerias, and freesias like an idiot. 

Marek snorted, “That’s because those don’t have a scent. You didn’t tell Marko much to go on, so he figured it was best to play it safe. Wouldn’t let me use anything that might set off allergies.”

"You did this?”

Marek looked over to arrangement. Lorenzo was watching him through the pinkish blossoms with a strange expression on his face.

“Yeah,”

He frowned. The same frown from that night at the club with his lips pursed into a thin line. “You came to Napoli to be a florist, Marek?”

Marek just shrugged. Lorenzo looked skeptical.

“If you like them, I’ll let Marko know it’s all settled.”

“Sure,” Lorenzo walked deeper into the flat. He was wearing the same jeans as earlier. The only jeans, Marek realized, he’d ever seen him in. “They are nice. Momma will have to forgive me now.”

“Not necessarily,” Marek said, before he could help himself. 

The Italian spared him a sideways glance over his shoulder. “You’re not very good at customer service, you know. Florists are supposed to be kind and delicate personalities. You’re nothing like that.”

“Is that so?” Marek smirked, inclining his head slightly. “Character defect, I guess.”

“... Sure. They’re perfect. You can go under one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“Have dinner with me,” he said smoothly, not even bothering to look Marek in the eye. It probably would have been easier if he’d just taken Lorenzo up on the invitation then.

-

Marek was laying on the sofa of his flat, not quite fuming over the events of the day. It was strange, Lorenzo pissed him off, but he didn’t feel any genuine ill will to him. And not even in the casual way he did for most people who pissed him off. It was more casual agitation. Not unpleasant necessarily it was, just unsettling. Agitating. Atypical. 

“What’s taking so long?” Cavani rang at half past eleven, skeletal as ever over the distorted cellphone speaker. No, he hadn’t bothered to say _hi_.

Marek took a breath, counted to ten. He’d read somewhere, that breathing was good for anger management. “You didn’t tell me he was the mayor’s son before I took the job. That complicates things. In addition to _your employer’s_ other requests”

“Alright,” Cavani agreed, “but you’re usually a little quicker even with difficult targets. And my client is getting impatient.”

“Tell him to calm down,” _Five, six, seven,_ Marek counted. “I’ve made contact. Another week this will be done with.”

“You better hope. This guy isn’t someone you want to piss off.”

“Neither am I.”

“This guy isn’t someone you want to piss off in _Italy_. And he’s touchy about this kid. Don’t fuck it up and don’t let him think you’ve run off to play florist with his money.”

Cavani’s insistence was unusual, enough so that Marek sat up, forgetting his breathing exercises for a minute. Or maybe that was just the implication that he was being watched.

“... Did you set me up for Buffon?” He asked. Silence answered him over the line. “Fucking hell, Cavani.”

“I’m not working for Buffon, but it’s not a bad idea to watch out for him, too.” Marek exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. And without counting, too.

“Don’t fuck this up, Marek. Take care of the kid and get out of there.”

“Right,”

“I happen to like you, too.”

Marek frowned at the dark corners of his flat, the phone jammed up uncomfortably against his ear. 

“... Comforting,” he said after a moment. By the time he replied, Cavani’d hung up anyway.

Marek kept himself up late that night digging into just whatever the fuck was up with Lorenzo Insigne. Turns out, the kid was something of an activist, or at least fancied himself as such. His social media _influencing_ actually centered around various causes which seemed like more or less flavors of the week. Still, if he’d happened on one that had upset one of Buffon’s industries, well. No one got to Gigi’s rank by being _generous_. And Marek wasn’t pleased to be caught up in one of his escapades, to say the least.

Italy sucked. The sunshine sucked, the food sucked, and the people weren’t even that attractive once you got over tans and the casual ease with nakedness that came from too much time at the beach. The sooner he could get the fuck out, the better.

That night he dreamed of trains that somehow chased him into volcanos located in the middle of a clear blue ocean. There was no land to be seen for miles, just a fiery pit of molten hell, a high speed train, and water. Marek was relatively sure that was the first time he dreamed of drowning.

-

Lorenzo came in twice the next week. Marek had missed him. Twice, according to Marko, he’d asked for Marek and twice he’d “looked like a kicked puppy” when Marek hadn’t been around. So finally, Marko, in his infinite nineteen year old wisdom, decided to play matchmaker and told Lorenzo Marek’s schedule.

He was well meaning, Marek reminded himself. And it wasn’t like Lorenzo knew anything about him that meant anything. 

In the meantime, Marek decided to actually do his homework on his mark. Lorenzo Insigne, born 4th June 1991, attended a prestigious boarding school in Pescara before leaving under _mysterious circumstances_. He then returned to his native Napoli where his father, then a city official, and his mother, a philanthropist and socialite, managed to get him enrolled in the local university for law upon completing secondary school. Lorenzo had no real mind to practice law exactly, but he used his skills to make trouble when it suited him, reckoning with a few developments here and there around the city.

The first was a building his father had actually been in favor of tearing down. It was an old factory near the school that some of the students used as a “performance space” but that the neighborhood council considered an eyesore. Moreover, it stood to make everyone a lot of money if the damn thing was razed and rebuilt as luxury shopping, or housing, or whatever _within minutes of the university_. 

Clever little Lorenzo had found some archaic document in the city records and launched a campaign to have the place declared a historical monument. It had worked. Looking at pictures online, though, Marek was with the neighborhood council. It looked like a fucking dump.

The next development Lorenzo Insigne had spoiled was a new factory which was supposed to make dish soap, but whose company had some problems with waste disposal in other parts of Italy. “Wouldn’t it be tragic,” Lorenzo had suggested in a shaky youtube video Marek had dug up, “if Napoli’s perfect beauty were to be ruined by thoughtless pollution.” Marek wasn’t sure if it was the kid’s impassioned speech or his dad’s connections in city hall, but either way, the permits for that factory had just never managed to materialize.

The latest incident Marek could find was a nightclub that was to have been closed down. There had been some incident, and they were raided and fined, first for serving minors, and second for fire code violations. From the message boards, most people thought the raids were just an attempt to clear the building. Either way, Lorenzo threw a party, promoted it for them, and somehow the club had enough money to meet the deadlines for its fines and stay afloat.

In other words, Marek had underestimated the pink gin drinking asshole. Still, none of the incidents seemed to be linked to Buffon. Not even through a third party.

Lorenzo showed up at the flower shop roughly two and a half hours after Marko confessed to selling Marek out. He wore tight jeans again, and a snapback low on his brow. He smirked defiantly at Marek as he slammed down another twenty euro bill as if it were a declaration of war. In a way it was. And defiance was fun, sometimes.

Marek told him easily that he wasn’t making an arrangement for twenty euros that would be worth shit and that if Lorenzo wanted to stop wasting his money he should stop pissing off his mom or whoever the fuck. Lorenzo told him to just make the damn flowers. Marek disappeared to the back to get Marko to deal with it and that evening he was delivering another two hundred euro arrangement.

It was strictly speaking unnecessary. The other one wouldn’t even be wilted yet.

For the second time that week, he stood in the impressive foyer trying to decide if he was intimidated or just annoyed. After a moment, he settled on annoyed. 

“Your mom must like flowers,” Marek observed, setting the arrangement down near a pile of mail that he took the opportunity to rearrange, reading the names and addresses as if they’d explain a little more of what in the hell was going on.

“She does. Especially the orchids.” Marek looked up, meeting Lorenzo’s dark eyes. He hadn’t been caught, but he also didn’t have any better an idea of what the hell was up with this kid, who wanted him dead, or why.

This continued every other day for rest of the week.

On Thursday Marek smiled as he made his delivery, “Mine did, too, you know.”

Lorenzo looked at him quizzically. “My mother liked flowers. Orchids, roses, anything that look soft.” 

His head inclined slightly, expression softening. “She’s dead?” The question was tentative, as if Lorenzo was afraid he’d be overstepping a boundary. In a way, he was. Personal details weren’t something Marek divulged easily.

“Yeah,” He hated Italy. It did strange things to him. “-- Hey, don’t look at me like that. It happened when I was a kid. I barely remember her anymore. Orchids, a hairstyle. A garden.” He shrugged dismissively. “Anyway, I hope they’re as nice as the last four. We’re sold out of orchids now, your mom has them all. Marko wanted me to tell you.”

“Is that so,” Lorenzo frowned, lips pursing. He pursed his lips well. Like someone who’d just bitten into a particularly sour lemon.

“It is,” the television was on in the den. On it, Lorenzo’s father was shaking hands with some other man in a dark business suit. 

“It’d be cheaper just to buy the shop at the rate you’re going,” he watched the news announcement, gleaning from his limited quick comprehension of written Italian that some real estate agreement with the city had just been arrived upon after some time.

“Maybe, but then Marko wouldn’t have his shop.” Lorenzo followed Marek’s line of sight. “Rafa Benitez,” he explained coarsely. “He’s a developer. _Figlio di puttana_.” 

“And fat,” Marek added casually. 

"And fat,” Lorenzo agreed with a vicious smile. It wasn’t an expression Marek could recall seeing on his face before. Playful, sure. Maybe a little needling, not vicious. Then again, his observations were fairly limited.

“Anyway,” he said uneasily. “You’ve got your flowers. Don’t order more orchids for a while or Marko will have a heart attack. Or order them from someone else, but don’t tell him.” He zipped his windbreaker up again, preparing to step out into the night.

“Mmm, that would defeat the purpose,” Lorenzo replied, not quite looking away from the television. 

Marek snorted, “Which is?”

“I already asked you to have dinner with me.” There was a teasing note back in Lorenzo’s tone.

“And I already told you to stop fucking with me.”

“I’m not,” he smiled, teasing again. The expression reached his dark eyes but barely pulled at the corners of his mouth. It was smug. Kind of infuriating.

“Fine,” Marek kept his own expression carefully blank. 

“Wait, really?”

“Tomorrow, 8pm, the café with the blue awning on the piazza by the shop. If you keep me waiting I’ll leave and tell everyone your mother has diseases and that’s why you keep sending her flowers.” With that, Marek turned to leave.

“Don’t bring my mother into this!”

-

The cafe with the blue awning was a Spanish joint called José’s. It served Andalusian food. Marek hadn’t known that when he’d made the suggestion. Frankly, he’d just picked the first thing that had popped into his head and that he’d remembered as looking vaguely expensive. If he was to endure a _date_ , which next to clubbing, was one of the worst forms of human interaction he could envision, it was going to be an expensive date.

Lorenzo arrived looking stylish as ever. In his right hand, he carried a single pink orchid wrapped in a handful of tissue and ribbon Marek recognized from the shop. He sat down across from Marek and slid the creation over. It wasn’t terrible really, for an amature.

“I’m not taking that,” glancing at it dismissively all the same. 

“Fine,” Lorenzo smiled daringly, reaching across Marek’s hands for a menu. Marek watched as he read, letting himself ponder again just what it was Cavani’s employer really had against this kid. And, to a surprisingly lesser degree, if perhaps this would be when Marek finally got a decent chance to complete his job.

“I can feel it when you do that, you know.” 

“Hmm?” 

Lorenzo looked up from the fancily pressed card stock. “Watch me. You watch people loudly.”

Marek smirked challengingly. He was very subtle. He prided himself on subtly, in fact. “Do I?”

“Yeah, it’s how I knew you’d say yes when I asked last night.” 

“I could walk away, you know.” Marek had the sudden impulse to crack the menu over the top of the Italian’s head.

“Yeah, but you won’t,” Lorenzo replied, full of confidence. “You were watching me that night in Moses, too. I saw.”

“... Maybe,” he replied, noncommittally. “Figure out what you want to eat.”

Lorenzo gave him a look absolutely laden with innuendo. He picked up the slightly wilted flower and tossed it at his head.

“--Hey!” he protested, throwing up the menu in self-defense. “That’s a nice flower, you know.”

“Relax, you’ve got about eighty more at home.”

What followed was perhaps the most normal date Marek had ever been on as an adult. In spite of Lorenzo’s teasing, when he wasn’t drunk out of his mind, he wasn’t making casual passes at _Slovakians with mohawks_ and even had the good sense to laugh at himself over that particular incident. It was nice, pleasant. Domestic. Not words Marek usually applied to his life.

That was, of course, until someone shot at them.

They’d been walking near the San Carlo Theatre, admiring the city lights in the evening. Again, it had been calm, peaceful, domestic, perhaps even, if Lorenzo could calm himself down for two minutes, _romantic_. And then something had changed. Marek had seen something, a light out of the corner of his eye maybe. Something, and the situation had changed.

“Get down!” He called, pushing Lorenzo bodily into the pavement. Around them tourists screamed and ran back and forth into whatever building they could. It could have been a coincidence, but Marek figured that was unlikely. He reached for the 9mm secured at his side as they ran. It fit easily into his palm, warmed from the balmy evening air and his own body heat. Marek kept his other hand at the small of Lorenzo’s back, pushing him along as they moved towards cover.

Lorenzo glanced up, and then seemed to do a cartoonish double take at the sight of the gun. “Where the hell did you get that?” He asked uneasily.

“Montenegro. Shut up and keep walking.”

But Lorenzo being Lorenzo, nothing could be done easily. He stopped dead in his tracks. “I’m not going anywhere with someone who brought a gun on a fucking dinner date. Are you insane?”

“Probably,” Marek smirked, looking around the piazza to see if their attackers were still around. “But you’re the mayor’s son and this could be a terrorist attack. I don’t think Interpol will care very much about my licensing if it keeps you from getting shot.” he gave Lorenzo a harsh shove. “Now move.”

They ran under an arch of the Chiesa di San Ferdinando. It gave them some cover, but not enough for Marek’s liking. 

“We should get out of this area as quickly as possible,” he told Lorenzo, eying the way back to the Via Chiaia. Once the shots were reported, the area would be flooded with people. There would be more chaos than there already was. Lorenzo would be caught in it, Marek could be caught and IDed simply for being with him. It could all escalate quite quickly.

He’d expected some pushback, but Lorenzo nodded once, and then turned the opposite way from the Chiaia. “We take the backstreets?” Marek nodded. Backstreets were better. Harder to get followed or caught up in crowds.

They ran hard up the Via Toledo, across broken pavement. Marek felt Lorenzo stumble and then pick himself up at his side. Terraces crowded above them, which wasn’t the best feeling in the world. Any one of them could have a sniper perched atop it just waiting for them. They didn’t though. They passed the Via Carlo de Cesare, and the Via Sergente Maggiore. The balconies felt like they were closing in. They passed stylish restaurants and quiet boutiques, quiet memories waiting to be made. Memories, Marek thought, idly, uncharacteristically, that he might like to make sometime in another life.

The tight medieval streets opened up into another piazza and looming above them was a large, fortress. And then the underground. They rode the train for two hours in various directions, before doubling back to the same station. No one would look for them in the city center now that it was crawling with cops.

-

"You set me the fuck up." Marek all but snarled into his shitty mobile. Cavani's message box seemed somehow mocking to him. 

They were safe for the moment, stowed away neatly in a one room hostel a few blocks from the flower shop. They'd checked in under assumed names. Marek let Lorenzo do the talking. Yes he bore a resemblance to _that_ Lorenzo Insigne, no he wasn't him. His name was Andrea Di Massi and he was on holiday from university showing his schoolmate from Budapest around. No, he didn't speak any Italian. _Ciao, come stai_ That kind of shit, no Italian. 

Lorenzo lied well, all smiles and dismissive waves. Marek would be lying if he said he wasn't a bit impressed, given the circumstances.

The clerk didn't blink when he'd only requested a single bed, or said they might be checking out early. Maybe the girl didn't buy it at all. Maybe she thought _that_ Lorenzo Insigne had a thing for lanky Central European hookers with weird hair and too many teeth. Marek tried to imagine Lorenzo with a hooker who was his approximate only female. First off, it was hard. Secondly, he didn't much like the idea. 

"So, you think someone's trying to kill me," Lorenzo said, breaking the exhausted silence into which they'd settled. Marek snorted.

"Think? No, I know. I think there are several someones trying to kill you." 

Lorenzo propped himself up on his arm. "How do you know? It could have been a random shooting."

"If it was a random shooting, someone else would have gotten hit. This was targeted at us." Marek pinched the bridge of his nose. It was probably a double hit. Cavani's employer had probably gotten impatience. He thought back a little over a week to that night in the club and wished vaguely he could have just done it then. If he had, he'd have been on a plane the next day to Liverpool or Havana, or São Paulo or wherever the fuck seemed interesting at the exact moment he went to book a ticket. 

Lorenzo reached out then, a concerned expression playing at his brow. He cradled the side of Marek's face, short fingers brushing against the short hairs at the back of his neck. It wasn't unpleasant exactly. "No offense, Marek, but you're a florist."

Marek eyed him. Their heads were laying next to each other. He could make some joke about falling into bed with someone on the first date, but the awkward intimacy in which they found themselves probably couldn't be helped. It also probably wouldn't do much to make Lorenzo any more accepting of what he was about to say. 

"People are good at seeing what they want. I'm a florist with a small caliber handgun that you should be able to bet is illegal, telling you that more than one person is trying to kill you." He kept his tone flat, direct, waiting to see if the other man would simply connect the dots. 

"So you have a gun. They're not common in Italy, but in America they sell them at the supermarket. I don't know anything about Slovakia." He tugged playfully at the back end of Marek's mohawk.

Some people, he could remember reading, needed physical contact in times of stress. It calmed them. Lorenzo seemed like that. Marek thought that kind of person sounded a bit suffocating in theory. Still he didn't shrug off the touch. 

"It doesn't make you James Bond."

Marek fixed him with a look. "No, not the least because he's a government agent and, oh right, fictional."

"He also ties a better tie," Lorenzo added cheekily. 

"Look, I'm trying to explain something to you," he was suddenly very conscious of the weight of Lorenzo's hand, the warmth where skin touched skin. "I know at least one person is trying to kill you because he paid me to do it."

Lorenzo didn't blink, or move his hand away immediately. 

"You're a _florist_." He repeated, chewing on the word as if to bring home exactly how ridiculous he found it. Then, slowly, as if the dots were slowly connecting in his head, he pulled away, seeming to draw in on himself. Lorenzo wasn't a tall man, but he generally wore it well and not as a weakness. He suddenly seemed fragile. Vulnerable. "Don't fuck with me right now."

Marek continued, "I'm not a florist--"

"We met in the bar. If you'd wanted to kill me, you could have done it then," he reasoned. 

"That was my intention. You disappeared."

"I bought you a drink!" At that, Marek honestly had to roll his eyes. 

"Do you think everyone who accepts your drinks has your best interest at heart? You were drunk. If you had come back from the bar, I would have walked you to a hotel, maybe even fucked you if you could still get it up after all that. And then I would have shot you twice in the back of the head." 

Lorenzo sat up. His expression was intense, evaluative. He studied Marek for a tell. Something. He looked away.

"So what the fuck was the phone call."

He leaned up against the headboard staring mildly at nothing. "The guy who contracted me. He started giving me shit a few days ago."

"Cause you were sending me flowers instead of shooting me?" Lorenzo frowned cynically. 

"Yeah," Marek snorted. "Though technically you sent those to yourself."

Lorenzo rolled his eyes. 

"Did you even fucking make those?" He fixed Marek with a scathing look. It was probably more effective on people who didn't kill people for a living. 

"I did. I'm a florist," he kept his tone level. "But so was my grandfather, and my mother, and she killed Olof Palme. People can be more than one thing."

"You told me she liked orchids."

Marek just shrugged. "She did. I do, too."

Lorenzo reached into his pocked and procured a pack of cigarettes and fluorescent plastic lighter. He selected one out of the pack and then, surprisingly politely, reached across the bed and offered one to Marek.

"You're taking this well," the observation hung between them. 

When Marek didn't take one after a second, he snatched the pack away and threw it against the wall. "I figure if you still wanted to kill me, you would have done it."

"Technically I'm still being paid to."

Marek rolled off the bed and went to collect the cigarettes. He set them on the dresser top. 

Lorenzo watched him, an eyebrow raised delicately. "You like to be technical. But you haven't done it yet."

"No, I haven't," the agreement was apprehensive. "Something about it doesn't feel right."

"Because killing someone usually feels right," Lorenzo huffed. 

"No, but it usually makes sense. Usually I can figure out why it's happening."

He looked at Lorenzo, sprawled comfortably out on the clean white duvet, exhaling small puffs of smoke angrily into the hotel room. 

"So why does someone want you dead?"

Lorenzo just rolled his eyes. "Fuck if I know."

-

They stayed the night in the hotel, ordered in cheap takeout, and talked. The conversation didn’t flow as easily as it had before, but that hardly seemed surprising. He must have fallen asleep at some point, because he woke up with a start to the low rumble of the television set and Lorenzo in bed beside him cackling at it. He had a bag of crisps in one hand, and the sheets were bunched up around his waist. 

"Hey, easy, _bello_ ," Lorenzo looked over at him. His dark eyes were momentarily concerned and then hardened again. Marek sat up, looking from Lorenzo to the television set and then back again. The blue light illuminated him almost like it had when they'd first met, back in that ridiculous nightclub. 

Marek could have commented on it, but he settled for something pointedly benign, gesturing mildly at the TV set. "What are you watching?" 

On the screen was a handful of boys and girls in private school uniforms. The volume was low, but even so Marek could tell they weren't speaking Italian. Lorenzo chomped down on a crisp, shrugging his shoulders. "Old Spanish drama. 90s throwback shit, you know?"

Marek didn't, but he nodded anyway. Lorenzo offered him the bag of crisps, his eyes looking back at the screen. He shook his head, declining. Lorenzo shrugged again. 

"Tell me about it," he said, settling back into the bed. 

Dark eyes glanced at him. "Well, it's set in a private school."

"No shit," Marek replied through a yawn. 

"It's-- That's kind of all there is to it, Marek." Lorenzo scratched at his neck. "It's a bunch of kids at a private school in Spain. It's a drama. They do drama things."

Marek snorted. "You have a future in literature. I can feel it."

"Shut the fuck up." 

The scene changed. A boy with spiked up black hair and a pathetic attempt at a soul patch was walking through the school hall. His uniform was stylishly disheveled and he had the sort of swagger to him that read TV badass. 

"That's Diego," Lorenzo said, pointing unnecessarily to the screen, as if Marek might somehow confuse _Diego_ for someone else in the room. "I think this is before he knocks up his girlfriend... Lucinda? I don't remember her name and anyway it was a psyche out. It ended up being the math teacher, Mr. García." 

"You know a lot about this show. It was popular in Italy?"

"Eh," Lorenzo watched on. In the scene, Diego was talking to an older man with salt and pepper hair and hard lines on his face. He was wearing a workman's coveralls and leaning on a mop. Probably the curmudgeon janitor character, Marek decided. "My friends and I used to get high and watch it after class. I guess I ended up actually liking it after a while."

"I didn't know you spoke Spanish," Marek said. 

Lorenzo chuckled cynically. "It wasn't in your files on me?"

Marek rolled over to look at Lorenzo. He wasn't looking back. "I didn't have files on you. It doesn't work like that."

"That's _so_ comforting," came the acerbic reply. Marek figured he probably deserved it.

-

At half past four in the morning, Cavani called back.

“I didn’t set you up,” he said, dry and disinterested from wherever he was. Marek envied his zen. Then again, he hadn’t just been shot at. 

“This isn’t Buffon?” Cavani hummed. Marek took that as a no, which crossed one pretty unpleasant name off a list of unknown length.

There was a thoughtful pause over the line. Marek thought he heard seagulls in the distance. Fucking seagulls.

“Near as I can tell, the guy paying for all this got impatient. Put another contract out on your boy.” He spoke with the air of someone waiting for paint to dry. It was only mildly infuriating. “He called me last night to ask where you were, so I told him.”

“You set me up, you mean.” Marek corrected, quickly.

“He’s in Napoli. I thought he might want to see you himself.”

“That’s not how it works Cavani, don’t give me that shit.”

“No.” Bored bemusement permeated the word. “But then dates and flower arrangements aren’t generally how it works either. And anyway, he’s not a professional. Said something about when he was doing business in England everything was more personal.”

“Give me a name or I’m hanging up now.”

“Can’t do that, but try not to get killed. And pick better dates, Insigne is short and doesn’t seem your type.”

There was a hollow click and Cavani was gone. Back to seagulls, back to wherever.

He looked at Lorenzo, sleeping next to him in nothing but his boxers and the thin white sheet. He looked weirdly peaceful, all things considered. It was nice, so Marek shook him awake.

“Hey, who do you know in England?”

Lorenzo blinked at him or just in general, and then reached up to rub at his eyes. 

“Any day now…”

“Uh,” he yawned. “A girl from university, a DJ, a friend from secondary school…”

Marek frowned. “So no one who hates you. Great.”

“Don’t look so disappointed, christ.” Lorenzo rolled over, making like he was about to go back to sleep.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m trying to help you.”

Lorenzo yawned again. His dark head rocked against the pillow. “You can help me in the morning.”

Marek rolled his eyes and fiddled with his phone, verifying that their alarm was set.

“Unless it’s Benítez,” Lorenzo said sleepily. “But he wouldn’t have the balls.”

-

According to google, accessed through another very kind visitor to the Hostel Hotel Bella Capri, Rafael Benítez was a Spanish businessman and real estate tycoon who had earned the majority of his success in the redevelopment of Liverpool during the mid-90s. He bought low, remodeled, and flipped apartments, shopping complexes, and the occasional music venue. In 2007, he’d purchased several properties on the Continent, first in Spain and then in Italy. And well, 2008, then 2009, hadn’t been kind to him. Cormorant, Inc. was now heavily indebted, with a few developments in complete limbo. 

In Napoli, they were all that way due to a single person.

“You’re saying that fat Spanish bastard put a _hit out on me_?” How Lorenzo could squawk like that and sip coffee simultaneously Marek didn’t know. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“Looks that way.” Marek sipped his espresso. It was hot and bitter. The perfect thing for that particular morning.

“Fuck him,” Lorenzo spat. Marek raised an eyebrow.

“Well, be that as it may, we know now. Or we have a pretty good idea anyway, and it’s better than I thought. If Buffon or anyone from Turin were after you, that probably would be it for both of us.”

Lorenzo looked offended. “I’m not a mobster, Marek.” 

“I am. Sort of. Anyway, this is better.”

Lorenzo looked away, out at the cafés around them waking up to the bright morning sunshine. “... So, mystery solved. What now?”

“Now, I go put the fear of god into Signore Benítez.”

He blinked quizzically. “... You’re not gonna ki-- Finish your, uh. Job?” 

“No… “ Marek eyed him thoughtfully from behind his espresso cup. “I’m used to cleaning up some ugly things. An unaffiliated hitman only gets called in by non-pros, or when they want loose ends secure. It’s why I usually don’t ask anything about my employers. But usually they don’t have to explain, it’s all pretty obvious. A power grab, or disposing of a mistress who made herself too troublesome. But this is just petty.”

“So, you’re not gonna kill me?” He looked back at Marek with large dark eyes. If Marek had to describe the expression, he might call it bambi-esque.  
“Hey, stop laughing, fucker. I’m being serious.”

“I can’t now. We slept together, that’s bad form.”

Lorenzo smiled playfully at him. “Yeah, but not in the fun way. I haven’t even kissed you. Some date.”

Marek felt his eyes roll. “The kiss is what you remember. Getting shot at? No. Not being kissed.”

“And after I went to all that trouble with the flowers.”

“You’re a pain in the ass, I hope you know that Signore Insigne.” He tossed a balled up sugar packet in Lorenzo’s general direction.

“Ah, but I got you to go out with me. As unfortunate as this date was being that I was not even properly kissed at the end.”

Shaking his head, Marek picked himself up out of his rickety café chair and leaned the short distance over to Lorenzo, planting a kiss firmly on his still smirking lips. The Italian reacted within within milliseconds, reaching up to tug at Marek’s mohawk and hold him in place. Again, it wasn’t unpleasant at all. But it probably wasn’t advisable. He felt Lorenzo lick at his lips as if to deepen the kiss, but Marek pulled away, a soft smile playing at his face.

“There. Date redeemed.” He downed the last bit of his espresso in a single gulp and put on his jacket. “Now go home. Lay low for a few days.”

“And you?” Lorenzo asked. Marek stubbornly refused to read much into his hopeful expression.

“I told you. I have to put the fear of god into Rafael Benítez.”

-

Rafa Benítez really was a stupid, petty, balless worm. Upon seeing Marek, he'd turned sheet white, confessed everything, and then once he saw Marek’s gun, promptly apologized for any trouble he might have caused. It was as if he were the Maître D' at a particularly awful restaurant, and not the CEO of a multinational development company who had decided, in some incredibly ill-advised flight of fancy, to go mobster. Marek split his lip and left a message for Cavani with him, just to be safe.

Before leaving Napoli, he called Marko to thank him for everything, and arranged a bouquet to be sent anonymously to the Insigne household. He made sure to specify that it should be some cheap, twenty euro shit. On the card he left his number, with a note that it would only be good for about a week. Below it was the message:

` Now I’ve actually sent you flowers. `

**Author's Note:**

> 1) _Non ci siamo già visti da qualche parte_ \- Haven't I seen you somewhere?  
>  2) _Figlio di puttana_ \- Son of a bitch  
>  3) The TV series Lorenzo is watching is _"El Instituto del San Aquí No"_ and Diego is played by none other than David Villa, teen idol. It's basically just a shitty teen drama set in a private school. Think Degrassi only more melodramatic and with uniforms.  
>  4) I think that's it. This has been edited since its initial posting to fix my spelling and formatting screw ups and also add in that scene with _San Aquí No_ since I thought it might give too much away (and it's not really plot relevant, though I do think it helps character development). Um. Thanks for reading!


End file.
